LONDON, ENGLAND—In recent decades, the King’s Cross neighborhood in central London was known as one of the city’s sketchiest areas: full of prostitutes, drug dealers, and other seedy elements. These days, the former railyard site—just steps from one of London’s major local, national, and international transit hubs—is rapidly being transformed into a major mixed-use commercial, residential, and academic zone.

At the moment, King’s Cross is part arts university, part construction site, part modern flats, and a handful of street food vendors—gourmet ham sandwiches and high-end coffee—lining the single exposed footpath. But just a few weeks ago, Google dropped over $1 billion to purchase 2.4 acres of land and develop a million square feet at office space at King’s Cross Central.

"[10 years ago], you would not leave a dog tied to a lamppost [in King’s Cross],” said Richard Howard, the senior director at DTZ, whose firm worked on brokering a deal with Google. (Last year, Condé Nast Travellerproclaimed it as London’s “hottest neighbourhood.”)

He says he’s been very busy since the Google deal closed. "The phone's been ringing for awhile now,” he added.

Enlarge/ For now the King's Boulevard is lined with a few street vendors, but those faux-ivy green plywood walls hide an active construction site.

According to local industry observers and commercial real estate developers, this huge purchase is setting the tone for the increasing important tech sector in London as American tech companies like Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and others are actively looking for significant properties in the city center. Even Yelp, which is largely unknown in Europe, just signed its first lease on a small office on Baker Street in 2012.

Among commercial land deals, this huge growth in the technology, media, and telecommunications sector (known in local industry jargon as “TMT”) appears to be driving new kinds of mixed-use office space—an early indication that London’s real estate and financial sectors could be banking, literally, on the expansion and investment of big tech companies in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

“35 percent of all [commercial real estate] demand in central London is TMT,” Howard added.

Would a Silicon Roundabout by any other name smell as sweet?

Once Google’s site is completed in 2016, the million-square-foot office will house several thousand employees and will be twice as big (as measured by workspace square footage) than Google’s home headquarters in Mountain View, California, known as the Googleplex. According to the search giant, the land deal makes it “one of the biggest ever commercial acquisitions in the UK.”

London has been a major financial hub for centuries, and its last major commercial development was propagated by international banks at the eastern edge of the city, in a former docklands area known as Canary Wharf. That collection of high-rise office complexes has about as much personality as a San Francisco skyscraper—with HSBC ATMs and a Starbucks in the lobby. While that might work for Goldman Sachs, developers say that doesn’t work for the likes of wannabe Googles, ideally replete with bike parking, child care, organic lunches, and the like. In short, like tech hipsters everywhere, startups want to put fun into function.

"[A built-in] Whole Foods is the dream for all these guys,” Hannah Fearnley, a national director at commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, told Ars. The high-end American grocery chain opened its first European store in London in 2007, with its second store opening its doors in 2012.

Fearnley's firm is actively beginning work on renovating a large L-shaped building (207-211 Old St.) with 500,000 square feet of office space right on “Silicon Roundabout,” as the Old St. roundabout is becoming known. This high-rise tower is adjacent to public housing, but immediately adjacent to a popular café, the Shoreditch Grind, which feels similar to any buzzing, tech-friendly Wi-Fi café in any city in the world.

In recent years, London’s tech scene has been largely confined to a handful of spaces clustered around the roundabout, a small corridor of 1970s-era buildings that house startups just 1.6 miles away from King’s Cross. Many of those companies are still fairly small: Last.fm, Moo, Dopplr, and others. The Roundabout already has one high-tech corporate anchor, the satellite communications firm Inmarsat.

“The Government can’t control and doesn’t know how to communicate with companies that are succeeding,” wrote Milo Yiannopoulos in December 2012. He’s the editor-in-chief of The Kernel, a UK-based online tech magazine.

“But, for the other 95 per cent, the quangocrats are swooping in and taking ownership. And we know where this story ends: ballooning numbers, mediocrity, failure, and colossal expense. What was previously grumbling from the fringes about the Government wading in and interfering in the sector, claiming credit not due to it and trying to take over what is happening in spite of and not because of [the Government’s] presence in east London is now represented in a generational flow of wealth through public sector VC firms and, now, urban regeneration: the latest, most expensive, and most manipulative kind of engineering the Government has yet applied to the area.”

Enlarge/ The technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sectors are driving huge demand in London real estate.

An eye towards young startups

For now, TechHub, one of Europe’s pre-eminent co-working spaces, has its flagship office a stone’s throw from the roundabout. A quick walk around the neighborhood suggests though, that it could do with a little sprucing up beyond its 1970s-era offices—many signs in the area indicate that there’s plenty of available space. Other trendy and prominent TMT sites include the nearby Tea Building and the Zetland House.

A Jones Lang LaSalle brochure indicates that it’s common knowledge in the London commercial real estate world that Amazon “has a requirement” for 300,000 to 600,000 square feet of new space by 2016—consolidating its existing London-area offices to the center. Microsoft, meanwhile, is looking to open another office with 150,000 square feet by 2014, and Sony, anywhere from 60,000 to 250,000 square feet by 2015. Major advertising firms, including Havas and Omnicom are also looking for at least 100,000 square feet each by 2015. Developers and realtors even have their eyes on smaller London-based startups, including Firebox, PeerIndex, and FundApps.

Meanwhile, Howard says that he’s already started checking out Bay Area startups that may perhaps one day want to expand to the UK and the rest of Europe.

"I read the San Francisco Chronicle, that’s more useful to spot the trends,” he said, adding that he encourages his younger colleagues to be aware of up-and-coming firms, even if it means only selling or leasing them a small property.

He said he even shows the now-famous photo of Microsoft (back in 1978)—asking his colleagues if they would rent to this hippie-looking group. When they invariably say no, Howard chastises them: “You’ve just turned away Microsoft, before they got huge.”

Promoted Comments

I'm guessing London is attractive because tech-hipsters care about culture more than living costs.

Cambridge has really good tech-park business estates, but it's also super-expensive to live in and doesn't have the cultural diversity of London.

The London suburban towns have no culture, because it's all been sucked away into London. Transport is often bad, since it's designed to get middle-aged dads from their family homes to their jobs in the city. It's not designed to get anywhere else (and to get somewhere else you often have to go to London first, then get a connecting train/plane or else get stuck on the M25 in your car.

The provincial cities have culture but don't always have the awesome 4G/LTE/fiber connectivity that telecoms/IT startups will want. Americans may also need translators for the broad accents. However, they do make a lot of sense for a startup that doesn't want to pay London wages or live in a wardrobe-sized apartment. I think Manchest/Leeds/Sheffield/Liverpool are all trying to get in on the action in the tech sector.

I think you hit the nail in the head there. London can hardly be called an English city - it looks and feels nothing like anything else throughout the UK. It's cosmopolitan and multicultural, and full of action.

Tech companies, and any other business, for that matter, don't just look for the cheapest place to live. All businesses need employees, and part of making yourself attractive to a prospective employee as a business is being able to offer a good life outside the office.

Which would be more attractive as a job offer: working for a hot tech start-up with a Birmingham office, or working for a hot tech start-up with a London office?

178 posts | registered Mar 18, 2011

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

37 Reader Comments

Sorry, but for some reason I always get a queasy feeling in my stomach when I see any reference to Yelp. Maybe I'm missing something, but in my opinion there's just something wrong with society when a company with such a sleazy business model AND a completely bogus content base is popular and successful.

Why London though? It's a very congested, overcrowded city with very high living costs (particularly property prices). There are plenty of cities across the country where tech companies could set up shop and save significantly on operating costs, including employee salaries.

@r3loaded I couldn't agree more. The size of the country means travel between major cities relatively quick, and there are some very nice places to set up outside London, where the housing is much cheaper, everything is less congested and public transport is much less saturated. There are already several startups in Cambridge, and a few games companies are set up in Edinburgh/Dundee. Other well connected cities such as Durham or York would also make excellent places to set up large complexes. The high price of everything in London means that salaries must generally be much higher than elsewhere in the country for the same standard of living.

Yeah and when the UK leaves the EU (sooner than later I hope) we'll see how many of those companies stay in Britain.

If the UK leaves the EU, it's going to cost Germany to make up the difference - contrary to popular opinion, the British net contribution to the EU is almost identical to France & Italy at approximately 4.8 billion Euros p/a.

More importantly, Germany will lose practically its only true ally in Europe.

It's sad to see ill-informed attitudes about the UK in the EU. That citizens in rational countries such as Germany, who actually share more or less identical opinions to the British, have swallowed hook, line and sinker every line France feeds them is depressing.

I'm guessing London is attractive because tech-hipsters care about culture more than living costs.

Cambridge has really good tech-park business estates, but it's also super-expensive to live in and doesn't have the cultural diversity of London.

The London suburban towns have no culture, because it's all been sucked away into London. Transport is often bad, since it's designed to get middle-aged dads from their family homes to their jobs in the city. It's not designed to get anywhere else (and to get somewhere else you often have to go to London first, then get a connecting train/plane or else get stuck on the M25 in your car.

The provincial cities have culture but don't always have the awesome 4G/LTE/fiber connectivity that telecoms/IT startups will want. Americans may also need translators for the broad accents. However, they do make a lot of sense for a startup that doesn't want to pay London wages or live in a wardrobe-sized apartment. I think Manchest/Leeds/Sheffield/Liverpool are all trying to get in on the action in the tech sector.

I've never understood why the area around (arguably) the most economically important train station in Britain (connecting London to everywhere north of London) was just a run-down shithole....or on second thoughts, maybe lonely tech geeks just love the easy access to prostitutes that Kings Cross can provide.

Why London though? It's a very congested, overcrowded city with very high living costs (particularly property prices). There are plenty of cities across the country where tech companies could set up shop and save significantly on operating costs, including employee salaries.

Despite the fact it's (slightly) more expensive than New York, there are far more expensive places in Europe. When you also consider there's a huge pool of talented IT professionals in the London area - a few world class universities (UCL, Imperial), the CIty of London, and a LOT of tech companies already in the M3 and M4 corridors (CSC, Cisco, Vodaphone, etc) - you can see why US companies would want to expand to London.

I'm guessing London is attractive because tech-hipsters care about culture more than living costs.

Cambridge has really good tech-park business estates, but it's also super-expensive to live in and doesn't have the cultural diversity of London.

The London suburban towns have no culture, because it's all been sucked away into London. Transport is often bad, since it's designed to get middle-aged dads from their family homes to their jobs in the city. It's not designed to get anywhere else (and to get somewhere else you often have to go to London first, then get a connecting train/plane or else get stuck on the M25 in your car.

The provincial cities have culture but don't always have the awesome 4G/LTE/fiber connectivity that telecoms/IT startups will want. Americans may also need translators for the broad accents. However, they do make a lot of sense for a startup that doesn't want to pay London wages or live in a wardrobe-sized apartment. I think Manchest/Leeds/Sheffield/Liverpool are all trying to get in on the action in the tech sector.

I think you hit the nail in the head there. London can hardly be called an English city - it looks and feels nothing like anything else throughout the UK. It's cosmopolitan and multicultural, and full of action.

Tech companies, and any other business, for that matter, don't just look for the cheapest place to live. All businesses need employees, and part of making yourself attractive to a prospective employee as a business is being able to offer a good life outside the office.

Which would be more attractive as a job offer: working for a hot tech start-up with a Birmingham office, or working for a hot tech start-up with a London office?

Clank75,As a french, it is difficult to understand the British mindset about the EU. The position of the UK seems to be the one of a merchant. I believe the EU is too big as it is. That many states with different mindsets can not agree on anything. I may be wrong but my opinion is that the UK only sees the EU as a cost and does not understand the benefits of building big things like Airbus, the ESA, common defense, student exchanges, common agricultural policy, common currency etc. The UK seems to see the EU as just a market and isn't willing to build anything else for fear that it would cost beans. Am I wrong?

I don't like the fact National rail is selling of extremely valuable land where could be used for transport expansion. It just makes future infrastructure cost that much higher. It's short sighted to sell off rail yards. Especially in London where there is literally NO space to build on.

@agroufI as a Britain do see the EU as a market, the EEC was were it should have stayed. Student exchanges shouldn't be effected, these are things that can be negotiated. I'm appalled at the open border policy, it's been abused to oblivion and I don't believe for one minute that cheap foreign labour is a good thing. We should have evolved our market out of that competitive space rather than keep to the easy option.

The common agricultural policy is one of the big drivers for anti eu feeling. French farming is over subsidized and the Spanish can quite frankly get the hell out of our waters.

This is off topic so I'm going to stop, plus I'll probably need a drink just to help me calm down.

Clank75,As a french, it is difficult to understand the British mindset about the EU. The position of the UK seems to be the one of a merchant. I believe the EU is too big as it is. That many states with different mindsets can not agree on anything. I may be wrong but my opinion is that the UK only sees the EU as a cost and does not understand the benefits of building big things like Airbus, the ESA, common defense, student exchanges, common agricultural policy, common currency etc. The UK seems to see the EU as just a market and isn't willing to build anything else for fear that it would cost beans. Am I wrong?

Yes, you are wrong.

The cost of the beans is, in my experience, very little discussed and not really newsworthy. Yes, at budget renegotiation time people want the budget to go down not up while national budgets are going the same, as a matter of principle, but the absolute figure is not really a huge topic of debate.

The UK's contribution to the EU is constantly slagged off by our European 'partners':At the same time that we are sending men and equipment to Mali to support the French military, your president is slagging us off.Our financial contribution - after the 'rebate' - is almost identical on an absolute and per-capita level to France and Italy's, but if you were to listen to anyone in the EU you'd think we were taking money out of the project. (Like, say, 'good Europeans' Spain or Belgium.)One of Europe's major cities, London is a major world financial centre; this is something the EU ought to be proud of, instead the good folk of Brussels spend their time working out ways to destroy it because they'd rather it was in Germany or France.

More importantly, the UK's opinions are completely disregarded.

Take the Euro. I, for one, am in favour of the Euro as a concept; I would have been in favour of it as an implementation as well, had it been a union of states with similar economies entering into a true fiscal union. It wasn't though, it was a political exercise that entailed fudging the figures and ignoring the economics; that's why most intelligent people in the UK were against joining. Sadly, everything that we were worried about has come to pass.

Now think back. IF, instead of just dismissing UK concerns as being "anti European little Englanders," the architects of the Euro had actually thought, "I wonder if they're making some good points, maybe we should consider what they're saying and maybe amend the plan," then the catastrophes of the last few years could have been avoided.

Everybody knows that the Common Agricultural Policy is a basket case that desperately needs reform. But if we mention it, we're the bad guys.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

I'm in that area every day. My (hot desk) office / incubator space is just round the corner from one of the photos & my daughters' school is 5 minutes walk away. I work till 3.15 pm then walk down the canal to pick up my kids at 3.30.

It's the nicest office I've ever worked in, with a kid friendly policy, coffee and beer bar, lots of social enterprise startups in the same room as me, lots of drop-in sessions, legal advice on hand etc.

It isn't perfect - I pay around £3 per hour for my desk, which suits me as I have short hours cos of kids & i'm not there every day, but would be overpriced for full-time workers. Also we have about a 1 hour commute each morning and evening, which is pretty heavy on the kids. (40min on the tube and 20 mins walking, each way, yay exercise) Maybe that's usual in the US but its pretty extreme for UK kids who usually live within walking distance of their school.

The jobs me and my partner are passionate about working in are pretty much only available in London so moving away isn't really an option. London is pretty much a cultural and skills lodestone, sucking in energy from the rest of the UK. I know people who have moved away from London for quality of life / family life & they've had to make careful choices about what they want from life. As does everyone I suppose.

Clank75,Actually, you make some good points and I will ammend my opinion about the UK position in the EU.Maybe the suspicion is not founded. My opinion now is that the EU should be less suspicious about the UK and that the UK should be less suspicous about the EU.

Why London though? It's a very congested, overcrowded city with very high living costs (particularly property prices). There are plenty of cities across the country where tech companies could set up shop and save significantly on operating costs, including employee salaries.

Google made the right choice - and yet Microsoft is still languishing in Reading (or to be precise - in a location somewhat *close* to Reading). It's the difference between having younger, more adventurous, and dedicated staff as opposed to people who only care about their salaries and families.

London is an amazing city - with unrivalled culture and technology base (ok, perhaps NYC is close - but no other place in the world is). I wouldn't want to raise my kids in London, but who needs kids, right?And while culture does not matter to businesses - it does to their workers.

Transport may be a bit of an issue, but in reality if you are willing to move to another part of the city - sooner or later you will find a good commute (or a location that is not too expensive but still close to the centre - so you can avoid long travels). And in London you are close to major airports - and there's high speed rail to the continent.

As for EU, there's no fucking way UK will ever leave it. It is just a political posturing by the Tories to drum up the support before 2015 elections. Only rural Tory electorate supports withdrawal and they are too few in numbers.

Clank75,Actually, you make some good points and I will ammend my opinion about the UK position in the EU.Maybe the suspicion is not founded. My opinion now is that the EU should be less suspicious about the UK and that the UK should be less suspicous about the EU.

I hope for that too - both sides; I would like the UK population to be significantly better informed and less hostile to the EU than it is, but even so the rabid anti-Europeans really are very much in the minority.

Unfortunately, the constant stream of anti-UK rhetoric that comes from the other side of the channel does rather play into their hands, and does influence opinion :-(.

I love the EU; in the past 12 months I've spent time in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. I adore the fact we can travel freely across borders. Good friends have moved to the continent to work and good friends are people who have come from Europe to work here. Hell, I've worked in France in the past, and if someone offered me a job in, say, Dusseldorf tomorrow I'd take it like a shot. The European Union has, undoubtedly, enriched our lives and culture in ways far beyond pure commerce.

But there are problems too. The CAP, fisheries policy, the total lack of democratic accountability of the whole affair, the fact that regulations are sketchily applied in many countries at best, leading to inequalities in the market (to take a trivial example, I've done business in Italy - compared to the UK it's the Wild West, corrupt in the extreme, it's impossible to undertake any licensed activity without paying bribes to officials, but for a UK business to pay those bribes is a criminal offence with a realistic chance of prosecution over here.)

We should be able to talk about those problems, and the EU as a whole should strive to solve them, rather than brushing them under the carpet and coming up with another "big bad UK" cover story to distract attention.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

The UK is seen as a nation cherry picking only the benefits of the EU (open market etc.) and blockading everything else. There are rights AND obligations. The EU doesn't need the UK but the UK needs the EU. I hope they'll leave and we get rid of one of the stumbling blocks.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

The UK is seen as a nation cherry picking only the benefits of the EU (open market etc.) and blockading everything else. There are rights AND obligations. The EU doesn't need the UK but the UK needs the EU. I hope they'll leave and we get rid of one of the stumbling blocks.

Secondly, the views of the French are not the only views in Europe. Just because *you* believe that you have some greater destiny to unite France and Germany in political union does not mean that every person in every country believes that. And those that hold a different view that actually reflects the birth of the EU (a trading block named the European Steel and Coal Community) have views that are equally, if not more, valid.

Finally, I am in favour of the EU; it has enabled immense growth and prosperity in Western Europe over the last 50 years. We should welcome Turkey and the Ukraine into the EU if they can meet the standards required (although having said that I do wonder about Italy and the endemic corruption there). The UK should be promoting a closer relationship with our neighbours. But I am not in favour of the constant corruption around the Parliament & CAP and the attempts by France and Germany to sabotage the British economy at every opportunity.

It's sad when they move to London / elsewhere because the skills required in the US are in short supply and the limit on import those with the skills to the US. The difference is 10 years ago companies were going after cheap labor. Now it is good to see companies chasing after quality workers. Maybe the US can start producing more of them.

It's sad when they move to London / elsewhere because the skills required in the US are in short supply and the limit on import those with the skills to the US. The difference is 10 years ago companies were going after cheap labor. Now it is good to see companies chasing after quality workers. Maybe the US can start producing more of them.

Ironic, as the debate in the UK is essentially the same, about how the UK's workforce is thick, lazy, etc, or at least they are when a right-wing politician is spouting their crap.

I'm guessing London is attractive because tech-hipsters care about culture more than living costs.

Cambridge has really good tech-park business estates, but it's also super-expensive to live in and doesn't have the cultural diversity of London.

The London suburban towns have no culture, because it's all been sucked away into London. Transport is often bad, since it's designed to get middle-aged dads from their family homes to their jobs in the city. It's not designed to get anywhere else (and to get somewhere else you often have to go to London first, then get a connecting train/plane or else get stuck on the M25 in your car.

The provincial cities have culture but don't always have the awesome 4G/LTE/fiber connectivity that telecoms/IT startups will want. Americans may also need translators for the broad accents. However, they do make a lot of sense for a startup that doesn't want to pay London wages or live in a wardrobe-sized apartment. I think Manchest/Leeds/Sheffield/Liverpool are all trying to get in on the action in the tech sector.

I think you hit the nail in the head there. London can hardly be called an English city - it looks and feels nothing like anything else throughout the UK. It's cosmopolitan and multicultural, and full of action.

Tech companies, and any other business, for that matter, don't just look for the cheapest place to live. All businesses need employees, and part of making yourself attractive to a prospective employee as a business is being able to offer a good life outside the office.

Which would be more attractive as a job offer: working for a hot tech start-up with a Birmingham office, or working for a hot tech start-up with a London office?

I guess it depends on the person. If the salary were L200,000 in London and L200,000 in Birmingham, I'm guessing a lot of people would choose the latter, especially if you have a family.

In the US, we have a similar situation. You can work in San Francisco and live in a shoebox, but be close to work and the action. Or for the same money in a city like Dallas, you live in a 4000sqft home with a big yard and a pool and drive 15 minutes to the action.

When I say "action" above, I was referring to the personal lifestyle action such as events, shops, etc. When it comes to the Tech Action, that is a whole different story. The action is in Silicon Valley (or London for UK). Period. The startups are there. A huge talent pool is congregated there, etc...

As a software engineer, in my experience in the US, the cost of living is usually around 2x the average, but the salaries my friends make in the area are usually around 30-50% more than average. So there is a huge gap in actual lifestyle between us. I'd love to work for Google, but I can't take a massive step down in adjusted income that would be required as a family. If I were a single guy, maybe I'd think definitely.

I'm guessing London is attractive because tech-hipsters care about culture more than living costs.

Cambridge has really good tech-park business estates, but it's also super-expensive to live in and doesn't have the cultural diversity of London.

The London suburban towns have no culture, because it's all been sucked away into London. Transport is often bad, since it's designed to get middle-aged dads from their family homes to their jobs in the city. It's not designed to get anywhere else (and to get somewhere else you often have to go to London first, then get a connecting train/plane or else get stuck on the M25 in your car.

The provincial cities have culture but don't always have the awesome 4G/LTE/fiber connectivity that telecoms/IT startups will want. Americans may also need translators for the broad accents. However, they do make a lot of sense for a startup that doesn't want to pay London wages or live in a wardrobe-sized apartment. I think Manchest/Leeds/Sheffield/Liverpool are all trying to get in on the action in the tech sector.

I think you hit the nail in the head there. London can hardly be called an English city - it looks and feels nothing like anything else throughout the UK. It's cosmopolitan and multicultural, and full of action.

Tech companies, and any other business, for that matter, don't just look for the cheapest place to live. All businesses need employees, and part of making yourself attractive to a prospective employee as a business is being able to offer a good life outside the office.

Which would be more attractive as a job offer: working for a hot tech start-up with a Birmingham office, or working for a hot tech start-up with a London office?

And if the employees have a mentaly unstable child and God forbids something bad happens the state wont execute them. And your less likely to be shot.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

The UK is seen as a nation cherry picking only the benefits of the EU (open market etc.) and blockading everything else. There are rights AND obligations. The EU doesn't need the UK but the UK needs the EU. I hope they'll leave and we get rid of one of the stumbling blocks.

Incidentally, since we've already discovered that your maths skills are degenerate, perhaps we could pick up on one or two other things...

FFabian wrote:

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

Could you provide a list of the important reforms hindered or blockaded by the UK? I'm intrigued!

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What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

It is indeed delightful that Germany has finally found a reason not to invade its neighbours, and we are all deeply grateful for that.

It's hardly a reason for everyone else to stop having an opinion though, is it? "Can't disagree with that, Germany might decide to invade France again" is not really a rational way to run a Union.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

The UK is seen as a nation cherry picking only the benefits of the EU (open market etc.) and blockading everything else. There are rights AND obligations. The EU doesn't need the UK but the UK needs the EU. I hope they'll leave and we get rid of one of the stumbling blocks.

So I got to thinking... Why would Wikipedia pick 2009, when more recent data is available? What is the source?

So I went to the source on Wikipedia, and I went to the EU's own stats website. The numbers don't match. How curious... But it turns out the source for Wikipedia is in fact an article discussing how easy it is to manipulate the EU's figures to represent them in different lights. How queer! So basically, they're completely meaningless.

Although the source does have this rather telling quote:

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Major differences between the net positions for a single country not only result from using contrasting methodologies, but also over time. For instance, the chart shows that Germany’s net contributor position (using the simple calculation method) has ranged between EUR 5.9 bn and EUR 11.5 bn over the last 10 years. Firstly, this is due to the share of traditional own resources fluctuating sharply on account of external trade and global economic factors. Secondly, there are also political reasons – including the current multi-annual Financial Perspective (2007-2013) with its negotiated 50% rebate for the German share of VAT-based own resources: in contrast with most other EU member states Germany only passes on 0.15 percentage points of value-added tax on average – which according to the Commission amounts to an annual saving of EUR 1.8 bn.

What's that FFabian? A rebate? For Germany? But, but, but... I thought it was only the nasty old UK that had rebates!

Of course no amount of cherry picking the data will change the fact that the UK is one of the top four contrinutors to the EU, not the evil stealing from it that you would like to believe. In fact, I went through the last 10 years' worth of figures from the EU's own website - on average, the UK and Italy are about equal third, a little behind France in 2nd. That's without adjusting for population.

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The relations between Germany and France was ONE example.

What do you want, a cookie for every country you've not invaded recently?

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We have an unprecedented period of peace in Western Europe - don't you think that the EU plays a part in that?

I sort of hoped the EU wasn't the only reason you'd managed to not start a war for seventy odd years, but we should indeed be grateful for small mercies. However I don't think it gives you the right to dictate terms to the rest of the continent.

Everybody knows that the European Commission is massively wasteful, and that EU politics are riddled with corruption and graft, but if we point it out it's because we're anti European. Why can't it be because we want to make the institution stronger?

The reality is that the most important role the UK has in European politics is as pantomime villain. It's handy to have someone you can just blame everything on because it avoids any need for introspection or serious reform, but tragically it really is going to push the UK out of the exit door. And we will all be significantly worse off for it.

The UK got more exceptions to the rules / regulations / contributions (one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate) than any other country in the EU. For decades most UK Government blocked important decisions to reform the EU out of fear for their sovereignty. Now the UK politicians decry the EU administration and decision making process as flawed, inefficient and slow - but it was their blockade attitude (among other things) that got us to this point by hindering or diluting every important reform.

What most Brits fail to understand is that the EU is more than some sort of market opportunity for the member states. It's a political idea - an idea that brought western Europe a period of peace of prosperity unknown in the centuries before. Who would've thought in the 19th and early 20th century that the two "archenemies" Germany and France are now closely allied and haven't fought against each other for more than 60 years.

The UK is seen as a nation cherry picking only the benefits of the EU (open market etc.) and blockading everything else. There are rights AND obligations. The EU doesn't need the UK but the UK needs the EU. I hope they'll leave and we get rid of one of the stumbling blocks.

@r3loaded I couldn't agree more. The size of the country means travel between major cities relatively quick, and there are some very nice places to set up outside London, where the housing is much cheaper, everything is less congested and public transport is much less saturated. There are already several startups in Cambridge, and a few games companies are set up in Edinburgh/Dundee. Other well connected cities such as Durham or York would also make excellent places to set up large complexes. The high price of everything in London means that salaries must generally be much higher than elsewhere in the country for the same standard of living.

I'll call you out on Dundee. It's not doing well at all. They're currently wasting money on a waterfront redevelopment that not only will be cut off from the rest of town by a main road, but is also being done when they have empty office space on the waterfront already and a pretty much deserted technology park. Realtime Worlds were the largest casualties, but there were others such as Cohort Studios. There are a few startups, but showing them off just seems like desperation.

As for technology companies in general; I know that this is the direction an advanced developed country's economy heads in, but they are almost all 'footloose' companies, who can be easily swayed to move elsewhere and can fairly easily move elsewhere. Even with investments as big as Google's, with that kind of property in London, they could fairly easily sell it off.

I suspect most of the employees in that new Google building will be lawyers and lobbyists, conveniently located for either a short cab ride to Westminster or a fast Eurostar train to Brussels. Profits will doubtless continue to be channelled through low-or-no-tax territories, hence the need for the lobbyists.

Why London though? It's a very congested, overcrowded city with very high living costs (particularly property prices). There are plenty of cities across the country where tech companies could set up shop and save significantly on operating costs, including employee salaries.

Despite the fact it's (slightly) more expensive than New York, there are far more expensive places in Europe. When you also consider there's a huge pool of talented IT professionals in the London area - a few world class universities (UCL, Imperial), the CIty of London, and a LOT of tech companies already in the M3 and M4 corridors (CSC, Cisco, Vodaphone, etc) - you can see why US companies would want to expand to London.

I meant other cities in the UK specifically rather than elsewhere in Europe. Besides, talented IT workers themselves are just as footloose as the companies they work for and there are many other good universities across the country that turn out top graduates - Manchester, Warwick, Southampton, York and Edinburgh just to name a few. There's no reason such companies can't cluster there too - the only really important criteria for them are proximity to motorways, railway stations and international airports.

@r3loaded I couldn't agree more. The size of the country means travel between major cities relatively quick, and there are some very nice places to set up outside London, where the housing is much cheaper, everything is less congested and public transport is much less saturated. There are already several startups in Cambridge, and a few games companies are set up in Edinburgh/Dundee. Other well connected cities such as Durham or York would also make excellent places to set up large complexes. The high price of everything in London means that salaries must generally be much higher than elsewhere in the country for the same standard of living.

I'll call you out on Dundee. It's not doing well at all. They're currently wasting money on a waterfront redevelopment that not only will be cut off from the rest of town by a main road, but is also being done when they have empty office space on the waterfront already and a pretty much deserted technology park. Realtime Worlds were the largest casualties, but there were others such as Cohort Studios. There are a few startups, but showing them off just seems like desperation.

Not sure I'd agree there. It's true that Realtime Worlds was the big Dundee company, but there are a lot of established companies doing things like mobile development who seem to be fairly stable. Also, while I don't know whether the waterfront development will be worth the money, property within walking distance of the town centre is going to be way more in demand than an industrial park on the edge of the city, and the main road (I'm guessing you're talking about the A92) has an overpass, so it's not really an impediment.